“Once I ventured to speak of the past to him.  I hoped to break through the icy reserve which he always maintains towards me now.  He looked at me, I will not soon forget his eyes, and said with fearful impressiveness:  ’My son is dead.  You know that, Regine.  We will let the dead rest in peace.’  I have never mentioned Hartmut’s name since then.”

“I suppose I hardly need counsel you to be silent when we return home,” continued her brother.  “On no account let Willibald hear of this meeting, for he’s so good-natured that he’d be off at once if he heard his boyhood’s friend was in the neighborhood.  It’s much better he should know nothing about it.  If there should be a second meeting I will just ignore the fellow.  Adelheid does not know him; in fact she doesn’t even know that Falkenried had a son.”

He broke off suddenly and arose, for his young wife and her escort emerged at that moment from the tower door.  The prince greeted the ambassador and his sister, whom he had met a day or two before, and asked quite innocently whether they had seen his friend Rojanow, who had disappeared from the tower a few moments before.

Wallmoden threw a warning glance toward his sister, who stared at the prince in surprise, and answered promptly and politely that he had seen no gentleman, and added that he was just on the point of going in search of his wife, as it was quite time they should return home.  The order to the groom was given at once, and a minute later the prince was bowing low to the fair woman and her husband, whom he had accompanied to the carriage.  He stood a full minute looking after them when the carriage rolled away.

Hartmut stood at the window of the little public room looking at the trio in the carriage, also.

On his face lay the same deadly pallor as when the name of Wallmoden was mentioned two days before, but to-day it was the pallor of a wild, intense anger.  He had steeled himself against question or reproof; these he would have met with supercilious arrogance, but the contemptuous manner in which he had been set aside struck him to his heart’s core.  Wallmoden’s words to his sister, “We do not know him.  Must I repeat that again?” incited his whole being to revolt.  He felt keenly the sentence which lay in them.  And Aunt Regine, too, the woman who had once shown an almost motherly affection for him, she turned her back on him as if ashamed of her first impulse to speak to him.  That was too much!

“Oh, here you are at last,” sounded Egon’s voice from the door.  “You disappeared most mysteriously.  Well, did you find your pocket-book?”

Hartmut turned toward his friend; he felt he must be on his guard.

“Yes,” he said absently.  “I found it on the stair, as I expected.”

“You might as well have let the watchman get it for you.  But why didn’t you come back?  ’Twas very shabby of you to desert Frau von Wallmoden and me.  You have not, I fear, won the lovely lady’s favor.  You were most ungracious.”